Kurayami
by Dzerzhina
Summary: Stukov and DuGalle have returned to Earth, and are making a return trip to the Koprulu sector.  They run into a bit of trouble, though...
1. A Warp of Space, Time, and Physics

Kurayami Wars

T for violence, language

DoaNA AU-but it isn't necessary to have read it. Stukov and DuGalle make a return trip to the Koprulu sector. And a little-known race has been tampering with the laws of physics.

Disclaimer: All original characters, plots, etc. in this fic and AU are mine. Starcraft and all characters, etc. with that franchise belong to Blizzard Entertainment.

"Hyperdrive running at ninety percent, sir. We are ten minutes from waypoint one." A young lieutenant aboard the DSS Aleksandr II looked up from her work and saluted DuGalle, reeling off the ship's statistics. DuGalle nodded.

"Good, Lieutenant Kurai. Begin hyperspeed decceleration." Kurai saluted crisply and bent over her terminal, wavy brown hair falling into her face, fingers flickering over the keyboard. She was seen as one of the UED's rising stars, being one of the people who supported the recent coup de'tat and the person who invented the current hyperdrive engine. She was from the city of Osaka in the East Asia province, and had been a private under the previous government. She occasionally glanced up at the screen as she typed; she couldn't actually touch-type. A short _beep_ interrupted her rapid typing. She glanced up at the monitor and swore loudly. She then turned to face DuGalle.

"Sir, the proximity alarm isn't working. We need to drop out of hyperspace now." DuGalle gave her a questioning glance.

"Why is this such an emergency? Surely we can wait eight minutes. Our course is preplanned. To drop out of hyperspace now would completely throw it off."

"Sir, look at the hypermissile gravitational correction statistics for the patch of space two minutes ahead." DuGalle looked at where Kurai was pointing, his brow furrowing as he interpreted the hypermissile readings. The hypermissiles were the ship's only defense from enemies also on the correspondent brane known as hyperspace. Because the 'normal' brane was warped by gravity, the correspondent branes were as well. The missiles had to correct for that, as the effects of gravity were greater in hyperspace. The readings DuGalle saw were so extreme, so indicative of incredibly warped space that his eyes widened slightly from them.

"What the hell... Drop out of hyperspace NOW!!!" Kurai instantly complied. The great ship shuddered and creaked with the immense forces acting on it as it deccelerated far faster than normal, because it had to drop to lightspeed to escape from hyperspace. The pressure of the air at the nose of the ship massively increased as the air at the stern thinned. A leak sprung in the nuclear reactor cooling plant, necessitating a reactor SCRAM. Red battle light switched on as the ship's smaller backup reactor started. A greenish safety matrix enveloped the members of the crew, saving them from dying a death by being crushed against the nose of the ship. Once the ship dropped to one-fourth lightspeed, the field dropped. A somewhat rumpled-looking Stukov walked into the control room.

"I was trying to sleep. Somebody explain this to me. Now." Kurai took his challenge. All eyes in the room fixed on her. Stukov could be slightly unpredictable in his judgement of people, and he looked like he wasn't in the best of moods.

"Sir, if you look at these statistics _here_ and _here_-" she indicated portions of the ship's runtime log "-you will see that they indicate a massive gravity field in front of us. One that can only be caused by a black hole. We would have been destroyed had we not dropped out of hyperspace when we did."

Stukov nodded, satisfied by her answer. The Vice Admiral stood, arms folded, and watched as repairs commenced. A small object caught his eye, and he focused in on it. _Well, let's see if Miss Genius knows what this is..._

"You wouldn't happen to know what _that_ is, would you, Lieutenant Kurai?" She followed his gaze to a small object floating about one hundred meters from the window.

"A piece of space junk, maybe?"

"Well, let's see." The object drifted nearer to the Aleksandr II. It suddenly swiveled, and a petal-like silhouette was seen."Activate the exterior lights. I don't think a piece of 'space junk' would turn like that." The lights blazed on, illuminating the object.

"Dear God... what the hell is that thing?" DuGalle took a step backward. Kurai looked as if she had eaten something that left a bad taste in her mouth. Stukov gazed on with a certain curiosity. For in front of them floated an alien creature. And alien it was.

It had three metallic-looking 'petals' at right angles to each other coming from a central eye. Each 'petal' also had a smaller, darker eye. Beneath the main eye was a body reminiscent of that of a bacteriophage, with a short cylinder and four claws.

"Well, it's not Zerg. That's all I can say of it." Stukov was the first to speak, arms folded across his chest. Lex poked his head out from under Stukov's admiral hat and immediately hid it again, shaking slightly. Stukov mentally comforted his mini-Zergling pet. /It's okay, Lex. Just a different species from what you're used to. It shouldn't bite./

As if in response, the creature launched itself claw-first at the titanium of the hull of the ship. A defensive electric arc killed it, but not before the tip of a claw had punctured the hull at a seam between plates of armor. /Well, it dies easily anyways, Lex. What should we name it?/ The Zergling spoke back in its own peculiar telepathic mix of sound and image. Stukov mentally interpreted. /Kurayami?/ Lex sent a telepathic grin.

"Lieutenant Kurai, activate the object retrival system." The body of the newly named Kurayami warped into the laboratory aboard the Aleksandr II. Stukov walked to the lab, donning a face mask and the armored gloves used by the Directorate.

The Kurayami measured about a meter across at the petals, and was a meter and a half long. The eyes were glazed over, but they retained a reddish tint in the irises. The petals seemed to be made of a blush metal, with a rippled texture. The claws were of the same material, but polished. Stukov selected a diamond saw and opened the 'body' of the Kurayami. The entire thing, save for the eyes, seemed to be made of the metallic substance.

/DuGalle, come see this. This thing shouldn't have been alive./ A minute later, the Admiral walked through the door.

"You're sure that isn't a robot or something?" The Russian emphatically shook his head.

"Definitely not a robot."

"Well, damn."

"So, DuGalle. To make up for this unfortunate delay, it seems that we must use the sublight engines until we have passed the black hole. However, there may be more Kurayami, and we have not yet fully assessed damage to the ship from our emergency deceleration." Stukov paced, mentally calculating a defense plan. DuGalle considered his options.

"Alexei, to travel using the sublight engines will take several months. You are sure it's too dangerous to use the hyperspace engine?" Orange-brown eyes shifted in DuGalle's direction as Stukov stopped pacing.

"_Yes_ I am sure. We will be torn to pieces by tidal forces if we attempt to pass so much as a neutron star in hyperspace. You are familiar with brane geometry, am I correct?"

"A shorter jump, maybe...? To reduce time to a week, and to slingshot around the black hole by entering the outer event horizon?" Stukov considered it.

"It could work. We'd avoid those Kurayami, and get to the Koprulu sector much faster... Let's do it. Lt. Kurai!" She snapped to attention.

"Sir!"

"Hn. Initiate a thirty-second hyperspace jump."

"Right on it." She began activating various systems. "And... _mark!_ One... two... three..." An alarm suddenly blared. "Sir, we are skipping between branes! Hull stress at eighty percent!" Time slowed for Stukov. The alarm and flashing red lights faded into the background as he lunged for the terminal. Skipping was caused when insufficient power was available. The ship 'dropped' to a fuzzy area where neither brane existed, and was buffeted between the edges of the two branes. The ship lurched, knocking Kurai against a bulkhead. Stukov's cloaked wings unfurled slightly, steadying his flight through the shifting space. His hand hit the power cut button at twenty seconds ship time. However, because of the time dilation caused by both the proximity of the black hole and the skipping meant that thirty-two seconds had been spent at hyperspace speed. The ship was close to the black hole... too close. As Stukov bounced off of the terminal and crumpled to the floor, unconcious, the Aleksandr II was entering the accretion disk of the black hole. Luckily, it was a resonably stable orbit. It would be seventy-two hours before they fell through the inner event horizon.

A/N: Meh. I'm cruel, leaving such a cliffhanger. Yes, they fall into the black hole. For those of you who know what I'm talking about, under most circumstances, if you fall into a black hole, you're screwed. The information that describes you will not be lost, but will be re-emitted as Hawking radiation in an unrecoverable manner. In other words, you die. But an old coughtheyareinthischaptercough friend keeps them from dying. No main-character death in this fic: I like Stukov too much to kill him.

Where's the rest of the fleet? They'll open a wormhole to Koprulu using the Aleksandr II as a target. It's just Stukov, Kurai, and DuGalle, plus the random engine room guys, cooks, weapons systems people, etc.

A/N: The physical laws of this universe are a mishmash of Stargate laws, random stuff from Scientific American (the greatest magazine ever), and the requirements of the plot. I can not explain most of it, because my physics is limited to fma. I'll try to stay consistent, and I'll explain what I know.

A brane is a four-dimensional space, such as the one we live in. It is represented as a plane. I'm giving different branes different rules. In 'hyperspace', the force of gravity, as well as the maximum speed before an object becomes two-dimensional (the speed of light) is much greater.

As for a black hole, check Wikipedia or something. I actually know a fair bit about black holes, but this fic isn't a science lesson.


	2. Dreamworld

Disclaimer: Starcraft isn't mine!

A/N: The next chapter! Dreamworld!

A light hovered in midair, beckoning, gliding. He followed it, its irresistible pull coaxing him onwards through the otherwise formless, cloudy void. The light seemed to be coming from a single point that occasionally seemed to flow from one spot to the next, as oil would- a band of color splaying against the misty space. It captured his attention and focus. But he seemed to be going in circles, inasmuch as one can distinguish direction where he was. A light, ringing laugh sounded, and the light went towards it. At last, something besides that pinpoint! A fair-skinned woman, clothed in glowing wreathes of light intertwined with a shroud of the dark, starry night, stood before him.

"You are different from the others." He shifted, uncomfortable. For his power seemed to have left him, and he felt naked, helpless before this entity.

"Yes, I suppose I am..." A laugh of merriment. He realized for that her face was shrouded. It was slightly unnerving.

"Yet you made the same mistakes as countless other victims of mine." What? Victims... _Where the hell am I?_

"Where am I, and what have you done with my crew?" She laughed again, the laugh seeming more malevolent in tone to the Russian.

"Where are you? Such impertinance... You are in the Palace of Our Gods. A place that, for all intents and purposes, is inescapable. You, Alexei Stukov, are inside of a black hole. Remember when your ship started 'skipping', as you humans and part-humans call it? That was your first mistake, to go into hyperdrive so near to the black hole. All of my victims do that. All who have been attacked by my scouts."

"Your scouts...?"

"You humans called them Kurayami." _Those things..._

"What are you going to do with us now?" A much more menacing, almost demonic laugh from her.

"Again, impertinent... You will be sacrificed, along with your ship, to the god that maintains my right to rule. Let me show you my subjects' ruler god..." The scene changed.

A struggling Dark Templar was bound with chains of the same material as the entity's clothing. He was being lowered toward an invisible area in the center. The gravity-warped stars were clearly visible through the event horizon. When the unfortunate Templar touched an invisible ring, he jerked in pain. For his foot had been sliced in half by the ring-shaped singularity, and blood was being drawn from it. A loud voice rang through the area in an unfamiliar language.

The distortion disappeared, and a diffuse light began glowing from the singularity. As the light increased, the Templar started burning from the intense radiation. _Hawking radition_, Stukov surmised, as the scene played itself out. He felt a certain sympathy with the Protoss warrior, for it would be his turn soon. It was amazing, however, the degree of manipulation his captors had over space-time. He abruptly returned to his previous 'reality' in the area with the entity.

She turned and walked away. The area faded, and was replaced by a prison. Stukov was being held in shackles that were of the same metal as the Kurayami scouts. The prison itself was bleak and desolate.

A/N: Cliffhanger! That, and I'm still finishing up planning for the rest of it.


End file.
